Manual Arts High and Banning High are separated by 17 miles and 16 exits on Interstate 110 in Los Angeles. Dwayne Polee and Joey Johnson were separated by four years.

Polee graduated from Manual Arts in 1981, and Johnson, then in eighth grade, no doubt had heard of him. Everyone had. Polee cemented his legend in the CIF final against storied Crenshaw High, scoring 43 points to beat the three-time champions before a record crowd of 14,123 at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. He went to UNLV and then Pepperdine, where he was two-time conference player of the year.

Polee soon had heard of Jumpin’ Joey Johnson. Everyone had.

He graduated from Banning High in 1985, leading the Wilmington school known for its football team out of basketball obscurity. He was 6-foot-3 but played like he was 7-3, with a 50-inch vertical leap (or was it 52, or 54?), with previously unimaginable dunks, with his tradition of going through the layup line wearing a baseball cap and flipping it off his head with the rim. He went to College of Southern Idaho, winning a junior college national title, and then Arizona State.

“I definitely heard about him,” Polee says. “I heard the stories. I heard that he was a hell of a player, that he could jump out of the gym. That name is big in L.A. basketball history.”

They never played high school ball at the same time, missing each other by a year, and for whatever reason they didn’t frequent the same parks or rec centers or summer leagues. Johnson’s older brother, Dennis, played against Polee’s future brother-in-law, Larry Kenon, in the NBA. But Jumpin’ Joey and Dwayne never faced each other in college or on their various stops during overseas pro careers.

“As strange as it is to say,” Polee says, “I never played against him.”

Two playground legends from the same era 17 miles apart, two reverent figures in California basketball lore, two planet-sized reputations. Different orbits.

They finally intersect Thursday night just down the freeway at Anaheim’s Honda Center, where San Diego State and Arizona play in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Or their sons do. Dwayne Polee II is a 6-7 junior for SDSU and the Mountain West sixth man of the year. Nick Johnson is a 6-3 junior for Arizona and the Pac-12 player of the year.

They’ll probably end up guarding each other.

“The genes,” Polee Sr. says, “don’t fall far.”

& & &

“I think,” Michelle Mayland is saying, “Nick always knew he was going to play basketball.”

Mayland is his mother. She and Joey met when he was at College of Southern Idaho, and she instantly learned of the leaping legend. Lived it.

There was the nail in the Moscow, Idaho, bar on a beam 11 feet, 6 inches high that Gus Johnson, a University of Idaho player (no relation) who would become an NBA Hall of Famer, had jumped up and bent in the 1960s, and no one had since. They took Joey to the bar; he jumped up and bent it. They put a nail a half-inch higher, and no one bent it that.